Street Lab

Background

Growing diversification and the development of a multi-ethnic urban society has lead to difficulties regarding social integration, as well as to the creation of a feeling among young people of having an uncertain future.
At the same time, we find evidence of creative social innovation: Especially lower-income and multi-ethnic urban areas have historically proven to be a breading ground for creative social innovation, trends and sub-cultures (e.g. hip hop, skateboarding, parcour, street art, etc.).

Idea

In an experimental and user-centered approach, we seek to understand the real needs and uses of mobile phones and services in today’s urban context.
To enable the research into authentic experiences in every day life, we plan to “move” the laboratory onto the street, thereby combining a semi controlled environment with a situation of permanent field research.
In view of growing diversification and the global multi-ethnic urban society, we focus our research on heterogenic and dense urban neighborhoods. We look at how to employ mobile ICT to facilitate creativity, understanding and social/environmental sustainability.

Activities

The project consists of the combined interests in our multiple research fields:

The research was mainly carried out in different semi-structured workshops (e.g. co-design workshops on mobile services with teenagers and young adults), each of them focusing on combinations of the above mentioned topics:

Methods

In our research we follow a general User-Centered Design approach including:
Participatory Design: Involving the user as an equal partner in the exploration and design process.
Ethnographic Research: Documenting and understanding traditions, rituals and habits in cultural and social contexts, e.g. via participatory observation.
Hybrid Research Space: Combining laboratory and field research in an experimental way.